Butterfly
by Rory4
Summary: Based on the extended version of the 'Carpathia' scene. Could she do it alone? Oneshot.


_**Butterfly**_

**A/n:**** Hey, guys, this is based on the extended version of the **_**Carpathia**_** scene that I just recently saw. Some of the stuff they cut from the movie, they really shouldn't have, if you ask me. Hopefully, if you haven't seen the extended version OR the original, you'll be able to follow this, but I'm not too sure. Sorry for that, if there's any difficulty! I'll be updating **_**CD**_** as soon as I can finish the next chapter I've been working on for months. LITERALLY. I'm right at the end, too, but I can't get the last bit out. Sigh. Anyway, keep an eye out. The story'll be ending soon.**

**Wow, it's been a while since I've posted anything here. Anyway, hope you enjoy this! Sorry if it's not my best work. I'm still navigating through the last vestiges of Dreaded Writer's Block. It was so bad, it deserves its own title, lol.**

**Disclaimer****: I don't own anything from **_**Titanic**_**, or the script, from which I did take a few excerpts. So, go and find somebody else to sue! Shoo!**

**Endless thanks to my beta, Bohemian Anne!**

She barely felt anything.

It was cold. There was no way Rose _couldn't_ feel that. The weight of ice in her hair, the sting of icy wind on the very surface of her skin. But nothing penetrated.

The surrounding world moved slowly; distantly. Like a dream. Voices echoed, and people smudged as they shifted. The dull, stunned thud of her heart was in someone else's chest, and thoughts came only in convoluted passing.

How long had they all been drifting?

The waves rocked the lifeboat beneath her gently; lullingly, somehow blasphemous after the violence of that morning. The darkness was fading into the gray approach of dawn, but the stars were still visible enough to hold her vague stare until her lids sagged shut and all she could see was the green, glowing fire of a waving flare.

When she woke, the early sun haloed an overdue ship looming above them. Her eyes trailed skyward over the name _Carpathia_ and to the silhouettes of people lining the ship's railing, gawking down at the carnage the _Titanic_ had left behind. Rose moved her gaze eastward and saw the lifebelted crewmen straining to row the lifeboats closer--closer to another waiting, scrambling group of their counterparts. She felt diluted deliverance.

She watched, face blank and white as the sinking moon, as the seamen began to help her fellow survivors up a rope ladder dangling from the _Carpathia's_ gangway doors from a vesicle of silence. Heartache swaddled her tighter than the blankets around her.

When it came her turn to board the ship, Rose struggled to stand, muscles seizing and body shaking. She took her very first steps for the second time, and used strength she didn't have to climb the ladder she was cautiously guided to, the lifeboat swaying beneath her feet with every advance.

When she reached the top, she grabbed reaching hands with both her own, and then her feet found the stability of the gangway. But with her very next step forward, her surroundings went spinning and her body went slack with savage infirmity.

Rose hardly felt herself falling, nor the impact of the woman's shoulder she collapsed against. She stood only because she was held, and began walking forward again only because she was led.

Blankets appeared around her shoulders, layer after layer, as if by magic, and when she was given a cup of hot tea, Officer Lowe had to manually wrap her fingers around it. Its heat barely touched her.

As she finally went to take a seat on the deck, the air around her stank of desperation and tears. Women begged for news of their husbands, their sons, and their brothers. Children stared with hollow eyes too old for their innocent faces. They were all connected now by the devastation. 'Stranger' was not relevant. Class and rank, for the moment, became the fickle thing that it was. As everyone came back to themselves, they became their loss. Who would _she_ be when she thawed?

Rose closed her eyes as noise and light slowly began to touch her again, and she wondered how she had gotten here. Just a few hours ago, if she went back just a _few_ hours ago, Jack was right there. He was there beside her in the suffocating cold, holding her hand. She could _feel_ his hand in hers. She could see their hot breath, like smoke, intermingling in the dark. How could he be gone? _How_ could it be that she was never going to see him again?

A tear slipped gently from beneath her lid and slowly traced down the contour of her cheek. If she just went back a few hours, she would be with him again.

"_Swim, Rose. I need you to swim!" The burn of the cold water was like the burn of fire. The crying, praying, moaning, shouting, and screaming of over a thousand became her own thoughts. People clawed mindlessly at she and Jack as they swam, searching for something, anything floating to get them out of the freezing water. The sense of isolation, the sight of nothing but obsidian water, was overwhelming._

_Jack wrapped his arms around her waist and sang softly into her ear. "Come Josephine in my flying machine, going up she goes, up she goes…"_

_Lying on her back, Rose stared glassy-eyed up at the dark sky and felt peaceful, even though she knew she was dying. Her breath was shallow and her lips barely moved as she sang. "Come Josephine, in my flying machine…"_

_Unity in their intertwined bodies. His slick skin sliding against hers, both trembling in the back of a Renault, bodies heavy and hot with pleasure._

_The tinkling of ice on wood as she broke their frozen hands apart. The cold that bit her lips when she kissed his hand for the last time._

_That fraction of a moment when she'd given up, saw no reason to try, to live…_

The sound of heavy boots on wood, louder than any of the dim external noises around her, abruptly broke through Rose's reverie. Penetrated. She stiffened.

She would recognize the rhythm of those footsteps anywhere.

"Sir, I don't think you'll find any of your people down here. It's all steerage."

Cal Hockley ignored the steward that apprehended him as he came down the stairs and continued walking, taking in one bleak face after another. He searched the faces of every person lining the deck, looked under tattered shawls and blankets, hoping against hope to find Rose. _Be here_, he thought. _Please._

She couldn't be dead.

The deck of the _Carpathia_ was crowded with huddled people, the recovered lifeboats of the _Titanic_, and a massive pile of lifebelts that should have been bigger. Over all the tumult, Rose felt each one of Cal's footsteps reverberate through her body like aftershocks from a bomb. Her senses were hyper-aware of his every move, and when she heard his swift intake of breath, she knew he had seen her. His footsteps picked up their pace, but all she could do was sit there, rigid with dread as he hurried towards her.

Relief swamped through Cal and thought fled when his eyes finally fell upon the back of Rose's head. He rushed forward.

"Rose!" The word rang with 'Thank God!'

Cal, earnest, wrapped his hand around Rose's shoulder and stepped in front of her.

The face he was met with was not Rose's.

He stared dumbly at the unfamiliar woman, struck silent and still by the startling return of his wretchedness. He backed away from her gradually, trance-like, and continued his search for Rose, heavy and despondent with reality.

Not a few feet away, Rose remained rooted, ignoring relief, wanting to disappear into the woodwork as she listened to Cal walk a little farther away and then turn again, circling back towards her. _Don't see me. Don't see me._

As he passed her, she could feel his shadow coast across her back.

What would have happened _had_ it been her he grabbed? With everything that had happened, would everything be forgiven? Would the whole thing be chalked up to cold feet and go on as if Rose had never caused a hitch in their plans? Would she become the fated good little society wife?

_The moment her eyes snapped open, and she realized she was going to fight to live._

As the sound of his footsteps became distant, Rose dared to turn around and watch her old life walk away.

Later, at nine PM on April 18, 1912, as the _Carpathia_ docked in New York, Rose and the rest of the _Titanic's_ refugees disembarked and stood on solid ground for the first time in eternity. Rose lingered on the dock, staring up at the Statue of Liberty, welcoming everyone home with her steadfast majesty. She'd been an undisputed symbol of freedom for many who'd laid eyes upon her. Rose had not expected to be one of them. She'd been brought home in chains, but there they lay, broken at Lady Liberty's feet.

She stood there staring for a long time, even as friends, relatives, the press, officers, and ambulances swarmed the dock. Then it began to rain and she was soaked. She'd been wetter.

So many people came to this country hoping for a new life. So many on the _Titanic_ that she'd known, people she'd danced with and laughed with, were never going to get that chance now. She and Jack would never get that chance.

Could she do it alone?

As if prompted by the universe, an officer with a clipboard and an umbrella approached her. "Can I take your name, please, love?"

Rose looked at him. Destiny was waiting for her answer.

Could she?

"Dawson. Rose Dawson."

Why couldn't she become a woman that stood tall on her own, like Lady Liberty?

Why not?

Eighty-four years later, old Rose sat in her wheelchair before a crowd of seamen and her granddaughter, sharing her story, sharing Jack, for the very first time. Everything he'd done that morning had been in order to deliver her here. She looked down at the jade butterfly hair comb--her favorite as a girl--clutched in her aged hands. That it had been one of the few things recovered from the wreckage seemed very fitting to her. It was like it'd been waiting to return to her all these years, at this very moment. Tracing its wings with a gentle finger, Rose smiled as she remembered how she'd always felt an unidentifiable _yearning_ whenever she'd looked at it.

Rose looked at the listeners before her, her eyes bright with wisdom and memories. "Can you exchange one life for another? A caterpillar turns into a butterfly. If a mindless insect can do it, why couldn't I? Was it anymore unimaginable than the sinking of the _Titanic_?"

She looked back down at the comb, and it was like looking through a time tunnel, at that girl standing on a dock so very long ago, as the woman she had hardly dared to imagine becoming.


End file.
